


The Praise of the Brave

by lyonet



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 00:40:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16733715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyonet/pseuds/lyonet
Summary: The disapproval of cowards is the praise of the brave.





	The Praise of the Brave

It was cold here in the highlands of Scotland, and two days worth of constant rain had left the landscape outside the window as washed out as a poor watercolour, the only colours in the artist’s palette being the green of the surrounding mountains and the grey of old stone. Nagini had been standing at this window for hours; all she could see out there was a place Credence was not.

She pressed a hand to the glass and thought about how much pressure it would take to send skittering cracks across this polished surface, to let the cold and rain inside these stolid walls. Nagini was not very strong as a woman – that was how they’d liked to keep her at the circus, small and slender in her cage, hungry enough to sit obediently still when they painted her face like a doll – but as a snake, there was nothing she could not destroy.

Credence was the same. While he was a tall man, you wouldn’t know it to look at his hunched shoulders, his ducked head, or to listen to the perpetual mutter of his voice. He was the one who had needed looking after when he first ended up in the cage next to hers, and Nagini had taught him what she knew about surviving the entertainment of purebloods. She would never forget the sight the first time he let go and the darkness flooded out of him, wild as a storm. She had thought then, _we are getting out of here._

And they had, they had been free and clear, if only they had taken the chance. But Credence didn’t really believe in freedom. Nagini had not understood that until too late.

So here she was, alone. At Hogwarts, of all places, surrounded by hundreds of young witches and wizards in their pretentious school robes, waving around their shiny wands, singing out the spells that they were so terribly proud of. Nagini could tell them all a thing or two about curses. She had lived with hers for a lifetime, she had come to know it and own it, to take its venom into herself. Her blood burned what it touched. Where she came from, anyone who saw her would know what she was and what that meant. Here, they saw a fragile little woman with angry eyes and they did not know anything at all, because they did not choose to know.

Of course, the Scamander brothers had been terribly kind. The English ideal of decency was strong in those two. Theseus had pulled all kinds of favours at the Ministry, where his recent grief was providing considerable leverage, in order for Nagini to stay on at Hogwarts instead of getting locked up and interrogated in a remote Ministry stronghold. Newt, meanwhile, had sat with Nagini and asked all sorts of very soft, gentle questions, and the whole time there was his battered brown suitcase – exactly the kind of prison Nagini would have found herself inside if Theseus had not decided that he owed her, if Yusuf Kama’s implosion of confused pureblood guilt had not driven him to fuss over her treatment. She had no doubt that she would have been taken into the Ministry anyway if Albus Dumbledore had not stepped in at the eleventh hour and smilingly said, “I’ll keep an eye on her for you, Travers, not to worry.”

Travers had looked like he wanted to spit nails, but he had not argued. Dumbledore’s word was its own spell. Even the Head of Magical Law Enforcement could not stand against it for long.

Not that Nagini was allowed to wander at will amidst Dumbledore’s precious students. It had been gently but firmly made clear to her that she was to stay in this uninhabited wing of the school, where there were only empty classrooms and store-rooms for Nagini to wreak havoc upon, for havoc was surely what they expected of her. Only approved visitors made their way to see her, and there were few enough of those. Nagini was grateful for that much – at least she was not being gaped at by half the Ministry.

Even the clothes she wore belonged to someone else. Dumbledore’s lieutenant, the professor with the pinched lips and tight bun of hair, had looked at Nagini’s circus dress and asked brusquely, “Do you _want_ to keep wearing that?” It was said in a judging tone but backed up with the offer of clean clothes: a dress that did not smell of smoke, shoes that were not stained with blood. Nagini felt a grudging debt to McGonagall that the woman had so quickly seen the practicalities of what Nagini needed, when no one else had. They were all so busy waiting for Nagini to collapse into gleaming coils that they could barely see her face.

On the third day, Dumbledore summoned her to his office for a leave-taking.  Kama had already left, before anyone could decide whether or not he ought to be arrested.  Tina Goldstein  had been required to stay on and do what she could to explain the absence of her sister. The idea of a Legilimens as powerful as Queenie Goldstein aligning herself with Grindelwald had sent Travers into a spiral of incredulous rage, and Tina had borne the brunt of that. Now she was finally allowed to return to America to make her report there, and was taking Jacob Kowalski with her. The Muggle barely seemed aware of where he was. He had spent most of the past few days closeted in the Hogwarts kitchens, having apparently been adopted by the resident house-elves. He was not in Dumbledore’s office when Nagini arrived, which was no surprise. He was probably due a thorough Obliviation when he next set foot on home soil.

The Scamander brothers were also leaving Hogwarts. They were headed  to London in the company of their mother, who had  just arrived in the family carriage. Because of course these English purebloods had their own carriages, pulled by winged horses, when they could  already Apparate and Disapparate at will.

Mrs Scamander was not at all what Nagini had expected. Some middle ground between Newt and Theseus, an upright British matriarch in tweedy robes, she had thought – but this was a woman so fashionable and poised it seemed unlikely she was related to either of them. She greeted Newt with a brief kiss on the cheek but stopped to press one long gloved hand against Theseus’ cheek. “Oh, my dear,” she said, and Theseus swallowed hard, like it hurt. “I was so sorry to hear about poor Leta.”

“Leta was a heroine,” Theseus said harshly. “She died fighting to save me.”

“I know,” his mother said. “I would expect nothing less from Leta. The one thing that girl did not know how to do was stop fighting.”

Newt stirred unhappily, but Theseus half-smiled. It looked like that hurt too.

Mrs Scamander had noted Nagini when she first walked into the room. She was, Nagini thought, the kind of woman who noted everything, who would know in an instant where your accent and the cut of your coat placed you in the social strata. She certainly knew just where to place Nagini. It was only when she had spoken to everyone else, including a chilly exchange of courtesies with a spectacularly awkward Tina, that she turned to Nagini and said, “And who is this?” with the air of someone saying, “And who forgot to take out the rubbish?”

“Nagini is my friend,” Newt said. He was a shocking liar, voice tight and defensive. He might even mean it, offering up friendship like ointment for a wound.

“She is my guest,” said a warm, genteel voice and everyone turned to see Albus Dumbledore standing in the doorway, hands in his pockets, smiling. “Aurora, what a pleasant surprise, we weren’t expecting you until this evening.”

It did not take Mrs Scamander’s discriminating eye to see where Dumbledore stood on the ladder of wizarding society. When he entered a room, everything was done in a response to his being there. Newt and Theseus straightened up, boys in the presence of a favourite teacher; Tina blushed and looked surly, an Auror in the presence of a duelling champion; and Mrs Scamander smiled, holding out her hand, a witch in the presence of her equal.

“Albus,” she said. “How marvellous you’ve been to my boys.”

Nagini saw no earthly reason to put up with any of this any longer. The temptation to transform into a shape with fangs was almost overwhelming as it was. She pushed past Dumbledore on her way out the door, the click of her shoes echoing off the high ceilings as she stalked down the hallway. She thought she would go to the Owlery. It would be amusing to watch all the birds flood out of the room in a panic of feathers, and any temporary convenience to the very proper, moneyed witches and wizards of Hogwarts was an appealing thought right now.

She did not quite get there. It seemed that Dumbledore had set his lieutenant on her, because she rounded a corner and found McGonagall standing there, trying and failing to look nonchalant, as if she just happened to be standing doing nothing in an empty hallway when Nagini wanted to get past. Nagini was prepared to wager high odds that McGonagall was physically pained by doing nothing. “Leave me alone,” Nagini hissed, and felt her tongue flicker against her teeth.

“Where are you going?” McGonagall asked, aiming for stern, instead sounding tense.

“I expect your headmaster will tell you before he tells me,” Nagini said.

There was a silence. McGonagall said, tentatively, “He wants to help you.”

“He wants me to help him,” Nagini corrected. “He wants me to fight with him. Yes?”

McGonagall watched her warily. “And what do you want to do, Miss Nagini?”

_The one thing that girl did not know how to do was stop fighting_ , Mrs Scamander had said, and Nagini had seen that as she watched Leta Lestrange die: beautiful and brutal as an avenging angel, battling hellfire until it finally consumed her. She had fought Grindelwald and he had killed her, and Nagini should not care – what did it matter to her if Grindelwald went after the purebloods? They could look to themselves – but there had been a moment, too brief, when she had thought that girl was Credence’s sister and it had made sense, because they both had such sad, sad eyes.

And now Leta was dead, and Credence was gone.

“Was she happy here? Leta Lestrange, was she happy at Hogwarts?” Nagini breathed a rattling laugh at McGonagall’s tight expression. “I didn’t think so. They would have treated Credence like that, no matter what he did. There is no place for him in your world. No place for me either. You wonder that he went to Grindelwald? Where else can he go?”

“You didn’t answer me, Miss Nagini,” McGonagall retorted. “What do you want?”

“I want,” Nagini spat, “for your people to fight your own damned battles. I will not be the one to put Credence back inside a cage.”

 

***

 

There was a letter on the table that would never be written. The quill lay on blank paper, and Queenie thought about what she would say if she picked it up. _Hey Teenie, you’ll never guess where I am. Germany!_ _At least I think it’s Germany._ _There’s mountains wherever you look, all topped with snow like icing sugar on a cake. I’m in a castle, Teenie. It’s a fairy tale._

_That means you have to come rescue me. They always rescue the princess, right?_

But Queenie was not a princess. Nor was she the hero. Daring acts were Tina’s area of expertise; crazy talk was Queenie’s. Even here, far away from everything amidst these snow-capped mountains, other people’s thoughts flashed at the edges of her mind like flickering  gas lamps , disorienting and impossible to ignore. It was getting worse every day.

This was what always happened to a natural Legilimens. If you spent enough time inside other people’s minds, you would eventually lose control of your own. In a few years Queenie would be a kind of patchwork, echoing the thoughts and feelings of the strongest minds around her. She was already getting grey-outs, remembering what other people had been doing but not what she had been doing herself. Grindelwald had been very kind about it. “Great abilities bring great burdens,” he had said, taking her arm, leading her to the room she had forgotten was supposed to be hers. “And yours, my brave Miss Goldstein, are greater than most. You can rest here, you are safe.”

Queenie had kissed him on the cheek. “You’re so good to us,” she’d said, and she had gone into the room and shut the door, and she hadn’t locked it, though she had wanted to so badly. She lay down on the bed. She was still lying there hours later, unable to sleep, listening.

And being listened to.

She had known it the moment that  Vinda  Rosier touched her. A Legilimens always recognises their own kind. Rosier had seemed like a life raft in that crowd, so many minds pulling Queenie one way and another until she felt she would be pulled into a thousand pieces – and all of it stopped when Rosier put a hand on her back, a mind like Queenie’s own spreading its influence as a shield,  a soft voice speaking a language Queenie knew. Rosier’s mind was a precision instrument. She did not have half Queenie’s power but what she had, she controlled completely. 

“With the help of our leader,” Rosier had said, “you can achieve balance too.”

She was Grindelwald’s elegant shadow, his most valued advisor.  The pureblood families that Grindelwald met with always relaxed at the sound of her cultured, moderate voice. Grindelwald, after all, was a radical, an unknown quantity, but Rosier was one of them, a fact accentuated by every syllable she spoke, every stitch she wore.

Queenie had never been afraid of anyone like she was afraid of Rosier.

By the time she left Grindelwald’s house in Paris, stumbling and dazed from the pressure of his mind against hers, she had known she had to do something. Then, after that disastrous speech, watching Credence Barebone push through the flames to reach Grindelwald’s side, Queenie had had her clearest thought in months:  _now or never._

She had broken Jacob’s heart. She had broken Tina’s trust. And she was probably going to get herself killed, because she was a goddamn terrible spy. But someone had to do it, and no one else could do what she could do. Only she could get this close.

She could hear them all. The humming intensity of Grindelwald, high above her in one of the towers. Listening to him was like being surrounded by the whirr of machinery. There was Credence near him, the dark ebb and flow of a mind that was never at peace with itself.

There was Rosier, brushing the edge of Queenie’s consciousness, feather-light. Like a smile from across the castle.  _Hello. I know you’re there._ Rosier would always know where Queenie was, what she was doing, but the one thing she could not say for sure was what Queenie was thinking.

Right now, Queenie was thinking,  _Credence, don’t trust a word he says._

And in the churning darkness, amidst memories that struck with enough force to send her reeling, she heard a quiet, cold answer.

_I don’t._

**Author's Note:**

> This work has been [translated into Chinese](https://tieba.baidu.com/p/6020214625?red_tag=2868445269) by ViolinDemons.


End file.
